Once upon a time and not so long ago, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. You could easily tell the difference between the two.
Then the WordPress CMS came along and everything changed. Now, it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell if a website is being powered by a “blogging” CMS software application like WordPress, or if it’s been built using web-building software. Not so much in terms of what the sites are being used for, but in terms of web design and also being able to tell what’s “under the hood”.
(Can You Tell Which Application Your Website Is Powered By?)
For website owners, understanding the difference between a Content Management System application like WordPress and other website-building software is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, regarding the areas that matter to most website owners, like web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the website up-to-date, managing web content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of the options below would you choose?
A) An eye-catching, professional-looking website that is actually expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a much cheaper cost than the cost of getting option ”A”.
If you went with site ”B” above, then you need to know more about the benefits of using WordPress, why WordPress can be used to create a professional-looking website that will normally turn out to be far less expensive to build than websites built using traditional website editing applications … and how to tell these two types apart!
WordPress is the world’s leading online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a flexible and powerful CMS platform that is ideally suited for small, medium and even large businesses.
Whether your reason for having an online presence is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a novice with no technical knowledge to use and manage, yet it offers many helpful functions that make your website more effective in terms of getting your content published and indexed by search engines, promoting visitor engagement, generating business leads and sales, scalability, etc.
With almost one in every five websites around the world currently being powered by WordPress, chances are that if you already own a website, your site is also powered by WordPress.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are thinking of getting one built, then wouldn’t it be great to be able to show your web developer an existing website with the design and layout that you like, know that it was built with WordPress and that you can, therefore, get something similarly built quite inexpensively?
How To Check If Your Website Was Built With WordPress
Do you need to know if your website was built using WordPress? Maybe you’ve come here because you’ve read about WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site runs on WordPress, or some other CMS.
Also, have you ever looked at a competitor’s website and wondered what they’re doing to try and get better results online?
Knowing if your competitor’s site is built with WordPress can tell you a few things about their strategies and methods, such as what themes or plugins they are using.
Here are some simple ways to tell if sites are powered WordPress:
Search The Source Code For A TellTale WordPress Footprint
If you know how to search the source code of a web page (e.g. Firefox Menu > Web Developer > Page Source if using Firefox, or Google Menu > More Tools > View Source if using Google Chrome), you can look for obvious telltale footprints …
(Viewing page source code using the Firefox browser)
Suppose that you are surfing the web and you visit a web site that you like, and you would like to know if the site was built on WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
After the source code of the site loads on your screen, search for “wp-content” either by visually scanning the code …
Or using the browser’s “Find” function …
(Using Firefox’s ‘Find’ function)
This will quickly tell you if the site is powered by WordPress or not.
Note: If you do not find the words “wp-content” in the page source code, it doesn’t necessarily mean that this is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to tell if a site runs on WordPress, as we will soon see.
As the focus of this article is to try and help non-technical users, however, we have listed below a number of easy methods you can use to check if your web site is powered by WordPress other than looking at the source code.
Ask Your Web Developer
While this may seem like the most logical thing to do, many web development agencies, for whatever reason, will build clients a website and not tell them it’s WordPress.
If you have an existing web site and you can’t tell what CMS application was used to build it, just ask your web developer or whoever built your website if it has been built using WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t get in touch with your webmaster, or what if you’ve come across a website that you really like while browsing the net and you would like to know if the site was built with WordPress?
Check Below Footer
If the site uses a WP theme and the website them template has not been modified, you can often find a “Proudly powered by WordPress” message shown in the footer section …
(Proudly Powered by WordPress – site footer)
If the methods above aren’t helpful to you, here are some other ways of telling whether a site was built with WordPress or not …
Sites That Can Tell You If A Website Is Built With WordPress
Here are a couple of online applications that will tell you if the website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
IsItWP.com
(Is It WP – WordPress Checker)
Is It WP is a free tool that can tell you very quickly if a website was built using WordPress or not.
Using this site is very easy. Just add the address of the website into the search field and click the button.
The tool will search through the site code and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, which version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the site is not a WordPress-driven site, you will get a message similar to the one below …
To use this tool, go here:
Advanced WP Theme Checker by Satori
(WordPress Theme Detector)
WordPress Theme Detector by Satori Studio is a free tool that can help determine whether or not a website uses WordPress as its CMS engine; it will also tell you which theme the site is using and provide a link to the theme’s official page.
To use this tool, paste the URL of a web page (it doesn’t have to be the home page) into the ‘Enter website URL’ field and click on the ‘What WordPress theme is that?’ button …
(Enter website URL and click the button)
The Detector will automatically scan the website and output its theme information …
(WordPress Theme Detector displays theme results)
If a website is built with WordPress but the theme is too customized to contain any traces of its origins, the Detector will still let you know it’s a WP site by outputting a message on the right.
(Modified WordPress theme message)
If the website is not using WordPress at all, the tool will also let you know …
(This website is not WordPress)
You can try the Detector yourself by visiting this link:
Wappalyzer – Web Browser Add-On (Firefox / Chrome)
(Wappalyzer – Browser Add-On (Firefox / Chrome))
If you use either the Firefox or Google Chrome web browser and want to be able to tell if the sites that you are visiting were built using WordPress, then Wappalyzer is a very useful extension to add to your browser.
Wappalyzer identifies what type of software is installed on the sites you are visiting.
According to their website …
“Wappalyzer is a browser extension that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, eCommerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more.”
It’s also a very easy to install and easy to use browser extension.
Once you have installed the Wappalyzer extension on your browser, icons will show up in your web browser menu identifying which software is being used by the sites you visit …
If you see the WordPress icon showing on your browser menu (as the above screen shot shows), then the site uses WordPress.
(It’s a WordPress site!)
Go here to download and install Wappalyzer:
SpyBar
(SpyBar – Browser Addon For WordPress)
SpyBar is a browser addon that lets you ‘reverse engineer’ any WordPress site you visit and see which WordPress plugins and themes are being used, right inside your web browser …
(SpyBar – Discover WordPress Plugins And Themes Used By Your Competitors)
SpyBar can be installed as a browser extension on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and is compatible with PC and Mac.
To download or learn more about SpyBar, go here:
Plugin Sniper
(Plugin Sniper – Find out what plugins a WordPress site is using)
Plugin Sniper lets you find out what plugins a WordPress site is using. This is a useful tool if you want to know what WordPress plugins are being used by your competitors.
Plugin Sniper is also a useful tool for researching what kinds of plugins businesses in certain niches are using …
(Search WordPress sites by categories and location)
To download or learn more about Plugin Sniper, go here:
I hope you have found this the information in this tutorial useful.
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